/. 



FURTHER TRACES OF THE ANCIENT 
NORTHMEN IN AMERICA, ' 



GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES OF THE LOCATION 
OF THEIR VINELAND. 



BY REV. ABNER MORSE, A.M. 

Corres. Mem. of the Old Colony Historical Society, Wisconsin State 
Historical Society, and other Historical Societies. 



READ BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND HIST. GEN. SOCIETY, 
AND PUBLISHED AT THEIR REQUEST. 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY H. W. BUTTON AND SON, 
Transcript Building. 

1861. 



FURTHER TRACES OF THE ANCIENT 
NORTHMEN IN AMERICA, 



GEOLOGICAL EWDENCES OF THE LOCATION 
OF THEIR VINELAND. 



BY REV. ABNER MORSE, A. M. 

Corres. Mem. of the Old Colony Historical Society, Wisconsin State 
Historical Society, and other Historical Societies. 



READ BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND HIST. GEff. SOCIETY, 
AND PUBLISHED AT THEIR REQUEST. 



BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY H. W. BUTTON AND SON, 
Transcript Building. 

1861. 



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TRACES OF NORTHMEN. 

During a sojourn, eight years ago, on Cape Cod 
and the South Shore Islands, I made Ind.an rel.cs a 
subject of espeeial inquiry ; and I here Fl^^^^'^^e 
following results and observations, to ehc.t fu.ther 
light relative to the priority of claims to the diseoy- 
erv of this continent. 

On the south side of the Cape, ap estuary makes 
up from the Sound for miles,, called Bass River 
affording a harbor for vessels. On the east side of 
this is the modern village of South Dennis, ^v■lth a 
fresh-water pond in the rear. Between this pond 
and the house of Watson Baker, Esq., a merchant 
and the postmaster of the place, he pointed out the 
spot in the side of a hill, where, in making an exca- 
vation about twenty years ago, beneath a w'hite oak 
stump of ancient growth, he came, at the depth of 
of four feet, upon a hearth of round boulders ar- 
ranged in parallel rows so as to form a neat hori- 
zontal parallelogram or square of three or four feet, 
and bedded in mortar. Of this he presented me a 
specimen, which proved to be garnetiferous sihca 
and had no doubt been detached by the action of 
fire from the surface of the boulders themselves, 
which, in that vicinity, were of the same composi- 
tion, and nearly as white as the mortar he had pre- 
served. From the age of the stump and its size, it 
was calculated that the tree had occupied the ground 
from near the beginning of the settlement, and his 



aged father, born hard by and alive at the discovery, 
affirmed that he knew the history of the place, that 
no building had ever stood near the locality, and 
that the land, covered with wood from the beginning, 
had, until lately, been kept for a wood lot. The 
earth was sandy, but too coarse, when exposed, for 
rapid transportation by wind and rain ; the surface 
above from which it might have been washed, was 
only a few rods wide, and had so great an inclina- 
tion over and below the hearth, that particles de- 
tached from above, would, for the most part, have 
been carried lower down ; so that if the wind 
for ages had been broken by forest trees, the soil 
grasped by their roots and shingled by their leaves, 
an immense period must have been required for such 
an alteration of surface as the depth of the hearth 
revealed. 

About half a mile east of this locality, other 
hearths of boulders, arranged in the form of a cres- 
cent, were said to have been exhumed in the digging 
of peat, but as the discoverer was absent, I could 
gain no further information concerning them. 

About six miles north of the elbow of the Cape, 
and two miles from the coast, a reliable man in- 
formed me that in raising peat, he there found be- 
neath it a hearth of rounded boulders, about eight 
inches in diameter, neatly arranged in the form of a 
crescent, with coals and brands resting upon it ; and 
that the peat over it was perfectly formed and four 
feet thick. The existence of the hearth showed that 
the place had previously been dry land ; the preser- 
vation of the unaltered portion of the brands indi- 
cated that they had been suddenly submerged, and 
the elevation and distance from the sea, and the con- 
tour of the surrounding country, proved that the 
organic matter for the formation of the peat could 



not have been derived from either, but must have 
resulted from the growth and decay of aquatic plants 
upon the spot, as the superficial layer had evidently 
done. The water in which it had formed could 
scarcely have had a trace of lime or potash, and yet 
with this advantage, how great a period must it not 
have required for the formation of a stratum four 
feet thick ? Would eight hundred years have 
sufficed ? 

The above relics were called by the discoverers 
Indian hearths. The language to me was new and 
strange. I did not suppose that the aborigines ever 
built hearths of any kind, and especially such neat 
ones upon a bibulous soil, where boulders were 
extremely scarce, while they certainly neglected to 
make such in their towns located on loamy and clayey 
surfaces plentifully strown with them. Of this I had 
enjoyed some opportunities to judge. 

The land in the basin of Charles River, on which 
had previously stood the Indian village of Muck- 
squit, was in 1659 assigned to my ancestor, and 
occupied by his descendants as a cow-walk until 
1726, when my great-grandfather began to denude 
and plough it. Indian relics were gathered in quan- 
tities that verified the tradition. Through an obser- 
vant grandfather and inquisitive father, both inher- 
itors of the farm, the history of all discoveries made 
upon it connected with the aborigines, such as their 
spring, planting fields, fishing places, and spots where 
their mineral implements were found in greatest 
numbers, had been shown me in my youth, but no 
site of an Indian hearth upon the hard and wet soil 
among millions of boulders was ever pointed out. 
There had been none. 

In 1835 I settled in Indiana, at the portage between 
the St. Joseph and Kankakee Rivers, where had 



been the metropolis of the Pottawatomee nation. 
An ancient tree, -with its trunk covered with hiero- 
glyphics was then standing in sight from my door, 
which the tribe, residing about two miles distant, 
regarded with veneration. Three generations of 
their former chiefs, as they said, had been born un- 
der it, and the last, Pokhagan, about one hundred 
years ago, when, from scarcity of fuel, they removed. 
Now, in the breaking up of the ground under and 
in every direction from this sacred tree, I am certain 
that no hearths were discovered, although in the 
bluffs and ravines of the locality, and in the banks 
and bed of the adjacent river, boulders were acces- 
sible and abundant. 

I had visited encampments of the rudest tribes, 
entered their bark wigwams of primitive style, with- 
out seeing pavements or fire-stones under their 
openings. 

For such reasons, I hastily referred the hearths 
upon the Cape, to other than aboriginal hands. But 
to attain certainty, if possible, I have since pushed 
my inquiries among antiquarians, trappers, miners, 
and men long engaged in breaking new land, and in 
excavating and grading for canals and railroads. 
The following are specimens of the result. 

J. A. Lapham, Esq., author of " Antiquities of 
Wisconsin," published in the 7th volume of the 
Smithsonian Contributions, writes from Milwaukee, 
April 9, 1860, to L. C. Draper, Esq., Secretary of 
the Wisconsin State Historical Society, " I give it 
as my opinion, that the aborigines of this country 
never made hearths like those mentioned by Rev. 
Abner Morse. During all my explorations of the 
ancient works in this State, I found no indications 
of the kind. The nearest approach to what might 
be called a hearth is the pavement of burnt clay or 



stones sometimes found under the ancient mounds. 
These were made for the purposes of sacrifice, and 
are always covered artificially and not by the accu- 
mulation of vegetable soil." 

A scientific gentleman, who early conducted a 
train to California, informs me, "that he neither saw 
nor heard of any Indian hearths ; but observed east 
of the North Pass, a finished pavement eighteen or 
twenty feet square, of flat stones brought from a 
distant ledge, and placed on the south side of a hill ; 
that its sides appeared to be at right angles with the 
cardinal points ; that it had too great an inclination, 
and this towards a meridian sun, for the floor or 
hearth of a dwelling ; and that its workmanship 
indicated a higher advance in the arts than is pos- 
sessed by any of the neighboring tribes, none of 
whom could give any account of its origin or use. 
It was no doubt the work of a race who preceded 
them, and not improbably an altar for sacrifice to 
the sun." 

William J. Sloan, M. D., Surgeon U. S. A., and 
Corresponding Secretary of the Historical Society 
of New Mexico, writes from Santa Fe, August 1, 
1860, that a communication from me relative to In- 
dian hearths, had by their Society been referred to 
the Permanent Section on Indian Races, for exam- 
ination and a report. Their silence and that of 
other diligent and courteous Historical Societies 
earlier addressed, may indicate that they have no 
knowledge of any to impart. 

Edward Ballard, Esq., writes from Brunswick, 
Me., April 2, 1860, to Rev. Dr. N. Bouton, President 
New Hampshire Historical Society, " I have exam- 
ined the relics in Hopkinton, N. H., inquired after 
by Rev. Mr. Morse. The implements, found in 
plentiful numbers, are all unmistakably aboriginal, 
and indicate a permanent dwelling place, a little vil- 



8 



lage. The whole is Indian, and was abandoned be- 
fore any missionary or trader had ever approached 
them. I examined between thirty and forty of the 
places where they had kindled their domestic fires 
within the circle of their wigwams. These are of 
two classes : — 

" 1. Where the soil is gravelly, a hemispherical 
cavity was scooped out of the surface of the ground 
four or five feet in diameter. The remains of char- 
coal and charred wood intermingled with the gravel 
and sometimes calcined clamshells, prove that the 
fire was kindled in this opening. There is no ap- 
pearance of hearth, jambs, or fire-place, other than 
the scooped out earth. 

" 2. Where the soil was hard and compact, I have 
seen in two instances flat stones placed in a position 
indicating the central part of the wigwam, discol- 
ored by the action of fire ; and in the eartli around 
them copious fragments of charcoal. In one of 
these homes the back part was formed by an upright 
granite block, a portion of the ledge. Fires had 
been kindled at its side. The surface was discolored 
and cracked by heat. But there were no jambs. 
I have seen and heard of other hearth stones flat 
and reddened by fire, but thrown out of place by 
the plough. 

" To these I may add that I have seen two other 
instances of small square inclosures, one about three 
feet and the other about five feet made with small 
stones placed on the sides, for the double purpose of 
keeping the fire within proper limits, and to serve 
as andirons to raise the wood above the coals and 
ashes, and to procure draft. In one of these, on the 
farm of Levi Bartlett, Esq., in Warren, the charcoal 
and the abundance of hard wood ashes* testify the 

* The appearance of ashes indicates it modern, built perhaps long 
after hunters and fishermen erected lodges in Maine. 



use to which the little square was applied. The shape 
of the hearth stones appears to have been accidentaL 
They had no inclination, but were horizontal, and 
placed with no reference to the sun's rays. These 
places for fires were not crescent shaped— not cir- 
cles." 

From this it appears that the natives sometimes 
used stones in their fire-places, yet built no paved 
hearths ; and that they did this in a country abound- 
ing with boulders and fragments of ledges. But in 
the localities referred to upon the Cape, these are 
extremely scarce both in and out of ground ; and in 
the original condition of the country could hardly 
have occurred at all upon the surface. For the- 
growth of roots would naturally have forced the 
finer and lighter parts of the soil to the surface,, 
thus covering them up ; and never, until the decay 
and evaporation of the organic matter, allowing the 
soil to settle down again among and below them, 
and the exposure of the ground from denudation to 
the action of deeper frosts, did they make their 
appearance on the surface. For the same reasons 
that fields once of easy tillage, are no longer arable ; 
and cartways formerly in use have become too rocky 
for foot-paths, do boulders now occur in the region 
of these hearths. When they were built it was not 
so. Over a wide area then must search have been 
made for boulders enough of equal diameters for 
their construction; or the builders must have 
gathered them on a long and distant strand. This 
the Indian would hardly have done. His indolence 
would have forbid ; his convenience and taste would 
have been satisfied with ruder and cheaper structures 
if in such places on such soil he formed any. The 
industry and patience, the regard for the beauty of 
the arch and evenness of surface indicated in the 



10 



works, were not Indian. The like has no where else 
been reported of him. Who then constructed these 
hearths ? 

The Icelandic Sagas, regarded by Danish antiqua- 
rians as veritable history, and for aught appears 
as credible as any preserved by the Greek rhapso- 
dists, assert the discovery of this continent in the 
10th century, by Northmen, and their subsequent 
settlement upon one of its islands. The length of 
the day given would locate it on the south coast of 
New England. They named it Vineland. Was it 
Rhode Island, on which they left no trace but the 
mysterious stone mill, an exact imitation of one yet. 
standing in England, at the place from which came 
some of the founders of Newport ? Was it the 
Cape, or either of the silicious islands of the South 
Shore ? Such a misnomer might have come from 
speculators, to make an island saleable abroad which 
could not be given away at home, but not from nav- 
igators attracted by its fertility. Where then was 
their Vineland ? If an island of ninety-eight per 
cent, silica would not have been so called, one of 
tertiary clay, overspread with the same drift com- 
mingled with the sub-stratum as ever happens, 
might have been so named. Where then was such 
an island ? Geological appearances will suggest. 

Dr. Hitchcock, in his Survey of Massachusetts, 
classes the Cape with the drift, but assigns no rea- 
sons for its peculiar shape. 

Capt. C. H. Davis, A.M., A.A.S., in an essay on 
the geological action of tidal currents, published by 
the American Academy in the third volume. New 
Series of their Memoirs, considers it an osar, con- 
structed by the same agencies in greater activity, 
which are now elongating Sandy Hook, Province- 
town Point, and the northen extremity of Nan- 



11 



tucket. In this able memoir he has rendered a val- 
uable service to science, and no doubt led intelligent 
readers and geologists to concur in his views. These 
may be correct, and adopted without material preju- 
dice to the use I would here make of geology. But 
has he not arrived at his conclusions more from the 
arenacious character and curvilinear form of the 
Cape, than from attention to its contour, and the 
nature, position, and state of its constituents, and 
the mineralogy of the country at the north-west and 
distant north ? Fragments of ledges with sharp 
corners occur upon it thirty miles east of their 
original line of transit ; and is not the sand gen- 
erally too sharp and its varieties too little mixed to 
have been long subject to the attrition and varied 
action of tidal currents ? And why, as a whole, 
from north of Plymouth to the end of the Cape, 
does it grow more silicious and comminuted ? These 
and other circumstances he might perhaps have 
found less consistent with his theory than with the 
one here adopted and offered for comparison and 
further examination. 

Prior to the glacial period in the earth's history, a 
tertiary clay formation of great thickness, extending 
from Cape Ann to Florida, had on our coast been 
broken up, with the exception of an island at Gay 
Head, then probably extending five or ten miles fur- 
ther west, and lofty compared with the present, 
another small island in West Barnstable, others still 
smaller in Truro and Nantucket, and another, as is 
presumed, of considerable extent and altitude, east 
of the Cape. During the first part of this period, 
when the hugest boulders were transported in ice- 
bergs, the currents from the North, meeting with no 
obstructions as far west as Fair Haven, carried their 
cargoes to sea. But east of that point they were 



12 



arrested by the high island of Gay Head. This is- 
land, although as much of it as remains was then 
tinder the sea, might, with what was afterwards 
abraded, have risen near the surface, or if half as 
thick as its congeners at the south, have towered far 
above it. In either case it would have been an ob- 
struction. On its northern side icebergs with large 
boulders* accumulated in an irregular mass, whose 
projections determined the profiles of future shores, 
one forming Buzzard's Bay, and another Holmes' 
Hole. During the second and last parts of the 
glacial period when the smaller boulders and finer 
drift were transported and deposited, this accumu- 
lation turned the current impinging against it from 
the west of North, to the south-east over Plymouth, 
and next to the east ; yet allowed enough of it 
to break over to fill cavities for points and small 
islands, and to form the Vineyard, joining it to the 
old land of Gay Head, but not to throw over a 
boulder larger than a lapstone. The main current, 
with its force broken and deflected to the east, began 
to be resisted by land, when it divided into two cur- 
rents and deposited two strands. One took a north- 
eastern direction, dropping sand progressively finer 
as far north as Provincetown harbor, and probably 
farther, for the north end of the original Cape is here 
cut with an angle indicative of the action of north- 

* One of these boulders had the diameter of a wind-mill, 
and consisted of five parts, which came hooped together in 
an ice-berg from their parent ledge in Essex Co., and 
rested eighty rods east of Mattapoisette. When the hoop 
melted, they fell apart where they now remain, with their 
faces exactly corresponding. Others, submerged, might be 
taken for ledges, which for size, would compare with one 
shipped in that age of nature's commerce, from east of 
Haden Row, in Hopkinton, to Rabbit Hill, in Medway, 
which furnished the steps and underpinning of the Rev. 
Dr. Ide's church, and the entire walls of a wire factory, 
about thirty by sixty feet, and two stories high. 



13 



east storms prior to a change of currents throwing 
up the alluvial point of Provincetown, which has 
lattt-rly protected it. The other current took a 
south-eastern course, curved to the west and endeu. 
with depositing the west part of Nantucket. 

In support of this theory, I refer to indications 
that the current direct from the distant north, grad- 
ually deposited its heavier and coarser minerals, ex- 
cept such as were incased in ice, before its curva- 
ture to the east ; also to the occurrence of huge 
boulders north, but not east or west, of the former 
clay of Gay Head ; to the mineralogical identity of 
the Cape and South Shore islands ; to the syn- 
cronization of the periods of their deposit ; to the 
former existence of a central ridge from Plymouth 
to Orleans, where it divided, sending off one branch 
north-east to Wellfleet, and the other south-east to 
Chatham ; to the reappearance of the latter branch 
on the north side of Nantucket ; to the drifting of 
the soil more at the west than at the east part of this 
island, and to the shallowness of the sound between 
Nantucket and Chatham. 

But if these places once joined, how have they 
become separated ? And if ridges, such as currents 
would deposit, once existed, what has destroyed 
their continuity ? The latter might have been accom- 
plished in two ways. If the land gradually emerged 
from beneath the sea, tidal and other currents might 
have divided the ridges into sections ; or, without 
supposing icebergs any thicker here than they then 
were over all New England, many might have been 
stranded upon the ridges, as some evidently were on 
their declivities. When the present temperature of 
the globe arrived, these on melting left basins for 
ponds, and vallies intersecting the ridges which wind 
and rain have since reduced to chains of hills. 



14 



The south-east strand, which connected the island 
with the main, perished by the action of the sea. 
The island that resisted and divided the current 
from the west, did not probably extend far south of 
the elbow of the Cape. Consequently the unbroken 
run of the ocean from the north-east, impinging at 
right angles against the south-east strand, cut 
through and degraded it as far as its curvature to 
the west. It then attacked with oblique strokes the 
inner shore of Nantucket, and cut it down to the 
central ridge from the revolving light to the town, 
when a change took place in the currents, throwing 
up an alluvial point on the north, which has since 
protected this part of the island. West of the town 
the sea has continued, as before, to advance, until it 
has passed the ridge, buried the first English grave- 
yard forty rods from the shore, and, before the ele- 
vation by variable currents of two alluvial points at 
the west end, it had cut off the little island of Tuc- 
cannuck, having probably reached an iceberg valley 
opening to the south, like two others occupied by 
ponds a little to the east, which first let it through. 

The north-east strand of the Cape, which partly 
remain, exhibits incontestable evidence of protection 
by land at the east. For had the ocean, from the 
commencement of the alluvial period, impinged 
against it as at present, not a sand of it would have 
remained thousands of years ago. It now degrades 
ten feet of it annually. The central ridge is remote 
from the sea in Orleans and Eastham, but in Well- 
fleet it forms the bluff. Below this, in Truro, the 
ocean has long since passed it. This shows that the 
island which once defended it, gradually gave way 
like a clay formation, letting the sea in first at the 
north, and that toward the south, where the ridge is 
miles within land, it must have remained until a 
modern century. 



15 



And as no change on this part of the coast in the 
relative level of land and water appears to have 
taken place since the present order of things began, 
further evidence of the existence of this island may 
yet be obtained by submarine explorations, detect- 
ing clay no deeper than the ocean is agitated by 
storms ; and if in any place it shall be found not 
abraded so low, then the very modern remains of the 
island may be inferred. 

This island the Northmen, in following the coast, 
must have discovered. If it was of tertiary clay, as 
is indicated, it had an attracting soil. Upon it they 
are supposed to have settled, and, during their stay, 
to have landed upon the Cape and made the hearths 
reported. For, the nature and thickness of the de- 
posits over them and the non-occurrence of mediaeval 
works of the same character, indicate that they were 
built us long ago as the colonization of Vineland, 
and all of them about the same time by a people who 
did not remain to build others. But the Indians, 
who, according to their tradition, had lived there ever 
since the creation of the Cape and Islands, and were 
as tenacious of their customs as any other Asiatics, 
remained. Had they brought the cusio n of making 
hearths from Asia, they would, as they spread to the 
East, have marked the whole continent with them, 
and not have reserved their beginning until they had 
reached Land's End ; and having here begun, why 
did they cease from their labor? The hearths, if 
made by them, were evidence of progress ; and as 
their remote and insular situation favored their secu- 
rity and further advancement, why did they retro- 
grade and all at once abandon a custom which must 
have proved a convenience ? Such a course would 
not have been Indian. On the contrary, if they had 
once adopted the custom^ they would have continued 



16 



it ; and mediseval hearths would occur in abundance 
under deposits progressively thinner up to the sur- 
face. But nothing of the kind, after eight years of 
inquiry, has been discovered. Here students of the 
Indian character may find a difficulty, soluble only 
in the belief that these hearths were the structures 
of other men who came and departed like the North- 
men. 

In Scandinavia, stone hearths of great antiquity, 
with charred wood upon them, have been uncovered, 
situated like these, near fishing places ; and had I 
not failed to receive from Copenhagen fac-similes of 
the ancient relics of that country, generously for- 
warded by C. J. Thompson, Esq., keeper of the Royal 
Museum of Scandinavian Antiquities, I might, by 
comparison, have ascertained a further resemblance, 
and shown that both must have been the work of the 
same people. 

But the investigation is not finished. More dis- 
coveries may be obtained ; and to the diligent atten- 
tion of antiquarians and the Historical Society of 
the Old Colony woulu I especially refer the subject. 

Abner Morse. 

Boston, August, 1861. 

P. S. — Individuals and societies to whom this is 
forwarded, having knowledge of ancient hearths like 
the above described, or of any other ancient relics 
not decidedly aboriginal and already given to the 
public, are respectfully solicited to communicate the 
same to the author at Boston, Mass. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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